Out sick with a cold today. For me its a bit of a surprise since I managed to avoid a cold all winter.
But I knew it was coming. I usually get a couple every year. Whenever its coming on, I get a swollen gland in the left side of my neck. Two days later, all the other symptoms will hit me.
Does your body every signal you that you are about to get sick?
Yup! Same here. I get this minor, vague, ill feeling that’s hard to describe. But the swollen glands is usually the red alert that you’re about to feel like shit for the next week or so.
Same here. A bit of pain in the throat that can’t be soothed, followed by stuffy ears the next day, stuffy nose the next day or two, then a cough for a little bit.
Every time I get a scratchy throat I brace myself for an upcoming cold. Thankfully, it hasn’t happened yet this year - they are just scratchy throats.
Slightly sore throat when I wake up, followed a few hours by a headache and possible coughing.
Yes. I haven’t had a cold in years (knock on wood), but when I get that horrid post-nasal drip thing, watch out. I’ve noticed those zinc pills or Zicam help alleviate it, though.
I think you folks are describing the very early stage of a cold, but that it has already started.
You can get pregnant before anything physical has happened, but you can’t feel a cold before.
A cough or an irritated soft pallet. I put my head over steam on the stove and that usually kills it right quick. Oh, and I breathe in and out through nose then mouth for several minutes.
I always know when I’m going to get sick, not just a cold, but anything. It’s a sort of vague not-right feeling, a bit like you get with a fever, but not as pronounced.
I think what it is is that you’ve picked up the germ and your body’s fighting it, but you haven’t developed the particular symptoms of that illness. I occasionally get the pre-sick feeling and then nothing happens; I think that’s when your immune system successfully fights it off.
I think that if you are reporting feelings that result from having picked up the germ, that your reported feelings are by definition symptoms.
Yeah, my lips get chapped. My lips are never chapped unless I’m getting sick, so I know it’s coming and start trying to sleep it off. The annoying part is that if I do get a full-blown cold, the chapped lips persist for weeks afterward. It drives me crazy.
I don’t think anyone was suggesting that these symptoms magically appeared before we got infected. Yes, I am sure I had the cold already and that the symptoms were just early stages of the infection.
I usually get a sore throat before I get a full-blown cold, and feel more tired than usual.
Sometimes, I get unquenchably thirsty, followed about 12 hours later by a slightly scratchy throat, which usually then turns into the full cold. Sometimes not.
Funny how this thread appears now, as last night my throat started feeling a little funny, which is a sure sign for me that the next morning it’s going to be all phlegmy and I’ll feel like crap. To attempt to ward it off I drank a bunch of water and an emergen-C. Amazingly, it worked! Today I didn’t feel sick at all.
It’s happened a couple times before, where I’ll feel it coming and I manage to fight it off somehow. I imagine it’s just that I wasn’t really going to get sick, and my sudden intake of vitamin C didn’t actually suddenly fight off the cold, but I’ll never know for sure, and a little extra vitamin C doesn’t hurt.
The cells infected by a virus send out substances that alert the immune system. These substances (cytokines, interleukines) cause at least some of the symptoms of a cold. A cold normally starts locally, you get the first symptoms in the nose or throat and particularly in the lymph nodes adjacent to the site of the infection. If your immune system manages to overcome the infection at this early state, this is all you feel. If the viruses can hang on for longer and has time to spread, you get a full-blown cold.
The way I was taught, something pretty physical had to happen before you got pregnant… 
A day or two before the onset of a cold, the skin of my lower back feels tender. It’s weird, but when it happens I know to stock up on Kleenex.
Yes, and it’s telling me so right now. 
Hey, I know the exact feeling you mean, but I’ve never associated it with impending illness. I’ll have to watch out for that.
I hardly ever get colds, but I get “phantom colds” quite frequently - a bit of a headache, a tickly throat, lasting 12 hours or so. Maybe one time out of a dozen it will actually turn into a proper cold, and when it does I’m not ashamed to say it’s usually a full-blown “I’m dying” man-flu episode. :o
My wife is a school teacher and always seems to pick up colds, so I assume I’m constantly fighting off the bugs and only an occasional super-strength virus manages to get a toehold.
The way doctors count nowadays is from the first day of the woman’s last period, given that many women can’t give a precise date of ovulation or tell you exactly when they had sex. As such, you experience the first two weeks of pregnancy, in retrospect, two weeks (or whatever your personal gap is between first day of your period and when you ovulate) before you actually did the deed.